On
January 28, 1954, Wilhelm Reich "happened accidentally to observe two bright
yellow-orange lights moving in front of a mountain range toward a lake."
The encounter was the opening salvo of a "war" with UFOs that would
occupy the final phases of Reich's troubled medical and scientific career.

At the time, Reich, a trained psychoanalyst who had once belonged to Sigmund
Freud's inner Vienna circle, was already facing what he called "emotional
and physical misery" caused by his more terrestrial battle with the U.S.
Food & Drug Administration over the use of "orgone," a controversial
form of ambient "life energy" he claimed to have discovered.

Reich found an inexhaustible range of uses for his discovery, touting orgone
as everything from the secret of antigravity to a tool for weather control,
especially rainmaking. Most importantly, he found that he could use orgone to
"interfere" with UFOs.

But to the FDA, orgone simply did not exist, rendering Reich's orgone-based
therapies prosecutable under quackery statutes. Even today, four decades after
the controversy, Reichian therapists claim to be able to manipulate the energy
for a wide variety of healing effects, including the cure for cancer, without
resorting to drugs, radiation or chemicals. Instead, Reichians work to build
up a current of orgone within the patient's vicinity in order to strengthen
and heal the underlying life force itself.

Nevertheless, Reich's legal fight with the FDA ended with his death in prison
after defying a federal injunction against the use of orgone for medical purposes.

Whatever the official status of his medical theories, Reich expected a response
when he wrote to the U.S. Air Force about his UFO sighting. He reasoned that
"the U.S. Air Force is the natural organization in the Western world responsible"
for dealing with such phenomena because "it operates in the atmosphere
and watches the frontier upward toward outer space." When the military
didn't deal with his report to his satisfaction, Reich took matters into his
own hands.

In his letter to the Air Force, reproduced in his last book, Contact With Space,
Reich described his sighting as "a brightly shining light" moving
from west to east through the forest outside Rangeley, Maine. A second, similar
phenomenon soon joined the first, both moving steadily in front of Spotted Mountain.
He concluded that the objects were not stars due to their course and the mountain
intervening between their apparent motion and the sky, but the possibility that
they were military vehicles or other objects of a terrestrial type did not seem
to occur to him.
At around the same time, Reich's secretary, Ilse Ollendorff, also reported
seeing
"a similar, but brighter and bigger, because closer, object." Like
the aerial phenomena observed by Reich, Ollendorff's sighting hovered in front
of a mountain, but then "was seen rising once vertically upward, settling
down again and then disappearing."

The Air Force, for its part, was either unaware of Reich's running battle with
the FDA, or was intrigued enough by his encounter to overlook the controversy.
Lt. Steven J. Hebert, stationed at the Presque Isle Air Force Base, wrote back
telling Reich that the "subject officer notified this organization to
take whatever action necessary, since this unit is interested in investigating
unidentified aerial phenomena."

Hebert enclosed a copy of Technical Information Sheet Form A, the Air Force's
UFO reporting questionnaire, for Reich and Ollendorff to fill out and return.
As Contact With Space ruefully notes, Reich received the letter only five days
before the FDA obtained the injunction forbidding the distribution of orgone
equipment as medical devices.

Reich returned the questionnaire along with a copy of a short essay, "Survey
on Ea," providing background on other unusual occurrences around the Orgonon
research facility, including the revelation that friends had told Reich "of
saucers having been seen over Orgonon in 1951." However, he had taken little
personal interest in the reports until 1953, when his discovery of Keyhoe's
book made him wonder whether UFOs – or, in his terminology, "Enigma Alpha"
or "Ea" – might be propelled by orgone.

The Air Force did not reply, perhaps put off by the impenetrable nature of
the
"basic orgonometric equations" included as an appendix to "Survey
on Ea." In the book, Reich includes a rather coyly self-important note
saying "not all can be revealed" about his relationship with the
Air Force, but there is no evidence in Contact With Space that Reich was in
communication with the military until October, a full six months later.

Instead, during that time, Reich writes that he busied himself with appealing
the FDA injunction and preparing a research trip to Arizona, where he hoped
to investigate the role played by orgone reactions in the formation of deserts.

In looking toward space to explain his sighting, Reich showed himself to be
anything but an uncontaminated witness. Like most U.S. citizens in the 1950s,
exposed to years of speculation that flying saucers were not native to the
Earth, Reich already believed that unknown aerial phenomena were, in his words,
most likely "contacts with visitors from outer space."

Reich was familiar with Donald Keyhoe's groundbreaking 1953 book Flying Saucers
from Outer Space, leaving him predisposed to look for extraterrestrial explanations
for the unknown lights weaving across the sky near his Maine research facility.
Moreover, the fact that he had seen 'War of the Worlds' only three weeks before
reporting his sighting was also likely a contributing factor – as Reich called
the film "a rather realistic approach to the planetary emergency,"
it evidently made quite an impression.

Furthermore, the cultural climate of the 1950s not only predisposed Reich to
look beyond the Earth, but to look for evidence that his UFOs were engaged
in
"warlike" behavior.

The threat of war was in the air, both in Reich's embattled personal life and
in the broader political framework. The Keyhoe book popularized several apparently
hostile encounters between Air Force pilots and unidentified aerial phenomena,
while no less a personage than General Douglas MacArthur would warn only a
year after Reich's sighting that "all countries on Earth will have to
unite to ... make a common front against attack by people on other planets."

With that in mind, the Austrian refugee, who had fled to the United States
from the Nazis, considered it not only a scientific but a patriotic duty to
alert Air Force Intelligence to the encounter at once.

This policy of full disclosure was typical to Reich, who had taken care to
keep the White House informed about developments in orgone research since 1951.
While his critics point to this as another symptom of what long-time skeptic
Martin Gardner called Reich's "paranoid egoism," Reich himself seems to have
considered the matter a "major responsibility" and seems to have
downplayed the potential uses of his encounter as a self-promotional vehicle.

In May, however, Reich made an accidental discovery that a few Air Force officers,
including General Harold Watson, chief of intelligence at Wright-Patterson
Air Force Base, would find very interesting.

As Reich was scanning the sky with a "cloudbuster," a device he had
designed to draw orgone out of the sky in order to induce rain, he saw a star
"fade out" in the presence of three other witnesses. He pointed the
cloudbuster pipes at a second blinking light, which also faded in brightness.
Meanwhile, the first star reasserted itself once the cloudbuster was pointed
away from it.

Reich repeated the experiment three more times in quick succession, reporting
identical effects each time. As it was scientifically impossible that his device
could have interacted with actual stars – even in orthodox Reichian literature,
the cloudbuster's range was measured in kilometers, not lightyears – he
concluded that his device had interfered with two UFOs.

Having concluded that his cloudbuster could also function as a "spacegun,"
Wilhelm Reich began to outfit his Arizona expedition as though preparing for
a war with outer space.

In October 1954, Wilhelm Reich was under siege. Not only had the Food and Drug
Administration stripped him of his livelihood, but almost daily UFO sightings
were leaving his friends and family exhausted and frightened.

"There is no doubt that I am at war" with the UFOs, Reich wrote hours
after four bright pulsating lights hovered for hours over Orgonon, his research
facility in rural Maine. "What seemed only a possibility one year ago
is certainty now."

The UFOs had been menacing Orgonon since Reich began experiments with super-charging
his "cloudbuster" weather-control device with small amounts of radioactive
material. Reich had learned in May that the cloudbuster not only apparently
pulled rain out of clouds, but also drained energy from lights in the sky, making
it, in his words, a "spacegun" effective against UFOs.

Like the cloudbuster, the Austrian psychiatrist turned "natural scientist"
was convinced, UFOs operated on orgone, an ambient energy source that interacts
with life and organic matter. Reich's claims to the contrary, the FDA had determined
that orgone did not exist, and so had obtained an injunction against any medical
treatment purporting to effect cures through orgone manipulation.

However, Reich stayed devoted to the reality of his discovery. He trained the
"spacegun" on two aerial objects as they hovered ominously over Orgonon,
causing both to retreat. One "disappeared after weakening, waning and blinking,
leading Reich to conclude triumphantly that "tonight, for the first time
in the history of man, the war waged for ages by living beings from outer space
upon this Earth . . . was reciprocated."

As above, so below. On that same day, Reich informed the authorities in Portland
that he would resume his orgone-oriented publishing efforts. This defiance
would lead to his death in prison less than three years later.

Reich, convinced that the aliens were waging their "war" against
Earth by poisoning its orgone, creating deserts, decided to test his spacegun
in the drought-wracked wastes north of Tucson, AZ. According to his final book,
Contact With Space, it had not rained in Tucson for 5 years, making the desert
a perfect proving ground for both the cloudbuster's rainmaking and UFO-weakening
abilities.

Meanwhile, in order to share his findings with the Air Force, Reich sent his
assistant William Moise ahead to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton,
Ohio. As Reich bitterly noted, Orgonon "had received no direct help from
the Air Force, financial or otherwise," but he remained eager to keep
the military posted on the extraterrestrial-combat uses of orgone.

Moise, however, got a guarded reception at Wright-Patterson. General Harold
Watson, chief of Air Force Intelligence, had initially seemed eager to speak
with Moise about Reich's claim to have "disabled" two UFOs, even insisting
that Moise could arrive late in the day and the two men could "continue
the conference after supper."
Travelling cross-country, Moise was concerned that accidental factors could
get in the way of the meeting and confirmed his appointment with Watson twice.
Still, by the time he got to Dayton, Watson was unavailable due to "unexpected
important business."

Instead, a "Dr. W. H. Byers" and Harry Haberer greeted Moise at the
base. Moise hated Byers on first sight, calling him "a man with a flabby
handshake and eyes that don't look at you." As Watson had expressed concern
that a group from the CIA would be visiting that week, it is a tantalizing possibility
that Byers was a member of that delegation. Haberer, meanwhile, is known to
UFO research as "a crack Air Force public relations man."

Moise refused to talk to the two men and instead waited until the next day,
when he briefed the base's deputy commander, who reportedly became "excited"
by the revelation of a weapon against UFOs. Haberer and Byers were apparently
less impressed, but took notes.

According to Reich, the Air Force continued its tacit interest in his work,
sending numerous jets to fly by his cloudbusting experiments but making no
overt gestures because the spacegun was "hot because it wasn't official,
and the reason it wasn't official was because it was so hot."

When his group arrived in Tucson from heavily-wooded Maine on October 19, they
were shocked by the Arizona desert, which was apparently much more severe than
it is today. "We were impressed by the bare ground, giving a general impression
of whiteness, hardness," Reich wrote. "The river beds had all been
dry for about 50 years . . . no prairie grass was to be seen anywhere."

Over the next few weeks, the party – composed of Reich, his daughter Eva and
son Peter, Moise and another assistant – suffered almost immediately from dehydration,
exhaustion and general discomfort, all of which they attributed to poisonous
"deadly orgone radiation." However, harassment from UFOs was sporadic
but persistent, leading Reich to theorize that the "thirsty" aerial
phenomena were actively fighting his rainmaking efforts.

The researchers fought back throughout November, apparently encouraging a rich
growth of winter prairie grass but no rain. Transportation difficulties had
forced Reich to leave his supply of radioactive material behind at Orgonon,
leaving the cloudbusters at a sharp disadvantage against the UFOs. Without
the radioactive charge, Reich's team could only annoy the lights in the sky
but not hinder their inscrutable activity in any real sense.

Meanwhile, the UFOs kept making the researchers miserable. One of Reich's assistants
suffered a "breakdown" while training his cloudbuster on the sky,
forcing him to return to his family for a month of recuperation. In his absence,
Reich speculated that the man had drawn too much poisonous orgone from a lurking
alien object.
By December 7, Reich decided it was time to strengthen his hand by sending
for his radioactive hole card, two radium needles charged with orgone. After
a plane trip marked by misadventure and bad weather, the needles arrived a
week later.

Once Reich had his radium, he was ready to retake the offensive against the
UFOs and the desert simultaneously.
"On December 14, about 16:30 hours, a full-scale interplanetary battle
came off," he wrote. "A battle which would have appeared incredible
as well as incomprehensible to anyone who knew nothing about the (UFO) problems
or who adhered to the illusion" that neither UFOs nor orgone existed.

First, the Orgonon team had to shake off "a special kind of deadly orgone
attack" that left them "in very bad shape . . . sick . . . dulled,
somehow out of balance." A "tremendous black cloud, looking like smoke
from a huge fire" grew over Tucson, eventually taking on an angry reddish-purple
coloration and triggering readings of 100,000 counts per minute on Reich's geiger
counter. All of the researchers "suffered from nausea, quivering, pain
in the upper abdomen and discoloration of movements," while "about
a dozen Air Force planes of various kinds" flew over the team's camp.

Matters of orgone, beneficial or poisonous, aside, Reich's description of the
event is reminiscent of a nuclear bomb test: a strong military presence, radiation,
smoke, queasiness. However, it is unlikely that the government would set off
a bomb apparently targeted directly on Tucson, a thriving regional center of
commerce.

Reich brought his radium needles into contact with the cloudbusters and started
firing away at the cloud to dissipate its power. The operation took about 20
minutes, at which time the cloud had broken up and the geiger count returned
to normal.

It rained three weeks later. In the meantime, Reich's journal is filled with
dozens of UFO sightings – "red-white-blue pulsations," "yellow
pulsations," "silvery disks," "green-yellow steady"
– on which to train his spacegun sights. Most "grew fainter," were
"extinguished" or "blinked out." The grass covering the
desert grew to a height of "several inches to a foot deep," encouraging
local ranchers to drive cattle into the region in herds.

After a brief side trip to Jacumba, CA, the team headed home to Maine at the
end of April, 1955. "Our job in Arizona was done," Reich said.

He was dead 18 months later, and all available copies of his books were burned
by court order. Only a few copies survived, forcing his scattered disciples
to rely on private printings of his works – including Contact in Space – for
direction.